February 23rd, 2009

Admirable Words (I’ve lost track of the numbers)

I was putting together a set of great short-story openings for my class on ideas, and this is one of my all-time favourites.

I grew up in small-town Ontario, moved away for university, moved to Toronto to start working, but after four years the work-station walls were closing in and I was spending part of the day in the washroom reading children’s book. Then I had a panic attack.

I was sitting in a stall with Peter Pan on my knees when a co-worker opened the washroom door and called my name. Apparently I was wanted. I arrived at my boss’s office to finder her seated at the conference table with our VPDP, our vice president of development and production: a twitchy, beige-suited man whom I’d spoken to only once, during a quiet elevator ride in which he’d turned and, as if clearing the air between us, said, “You’re anorexic, aren’t you?” Just slim, I assured him.

–from “The Cosmic Elfs” by Sharon English

The author, by the way, is reading at The Box Salon this Wednesday, as is the wonderous Claudia Dey, and many other fine folks. Coming?

I wanna be the one
RR

December 27th, 2008

Admirable Words (III)

The truth is that like all great French generals and statesmen, I am a man of action by default. My real vocation was to be a writer but my early stories were rejected by corrupt monarchist editors who wished to suppress the truth about Corsica. Before they went to the blade, my poems were taped to their mouths. Now I feel most myself in the night silence of my tent, the candles sputtering, the white paper stretching out in creamy reams softer than the eyeball of an empress. My letters to Josephine, my diaries of war, but most of all the words unwritten, the vast armies that have sunk into the whiteness of paper like my troops into the snow of the endless Russian plains.

Lost, yes, because words cannot equal the splendour of these pre-dawn hours, the wonder of being alone in a tent near tomorrow’s battlefield. Outside my canvas the starry sky sparkles over the heads of my sleeping troops, four hundred thousand men lurching towards the dawn, toward the first light that will jerk them awake, full of fear and hunger and that wild chaos only I can harness, only I can turn into an orderly hurricane of violence that will send them flying into the enemy, hacking and being hacked until their skins split, their bones shatter, their blood masses in stinking pools slowly draining to dark patches on the earth so at the end of the day, as the sun sets on the dead and the dying, as the cries of the wounded rise above the surgeons’ saws and the hasty whispered prayers of my priests, I, Napoleon, repulsed, sated, sick at heart, fulfilled, I will mourn the great unconscious mass of men who sleep around me now; I will mourn their dead and crippled horses, their orphans, the rivers of wine they will never drink, the aging flesh their hands will never know. Monster, yes, that is the title with which history will reward me, but I am most at home in my lonely simple tent, doing the job that has been left to me, the manufacture of dreams and nightmares, sending my word-rich armies onto their pages of snow, letting them cancel and slaughter each other until all that remains is a brief and elegant poem, a few nostalgic blood-tinted lines limping towards eternity, yes, that’s how I want to be remembered, bleeding and limping in rags across the snow, or even forget the blood, the rags, the snow, the limp. Just me.

–Matt Cohen’s “Napoleon in Moscow,” from Getting Lucky

December 9th, 2008

Admirable Words (II)

I wanna take a streetcar downtown
Read Dostoyevsky* and wander around
Drink some Guinness from a tin
Because my UI cheque has just come in.
Aw, where you been?

Because
Everything is coming up
Rosy & grey.
Yeah, the wind is cold but
The smell of snow
Warms me today
And your smile is fine
And it’s just like mine
And it won’t go away
Because everything is rosy & grey.

You’ve been under my skin for more than 8 years
It’s been 8 years of laughter and 8 years of tears.
And I dunno what the future could hold or will do
For me and you
But I’m a much better man for having known you.
Yeah, you know that’s true.

Because
Everything is coming up
Rosy & grey.
Yeah, the wind is cold but
The smell of snow
Warms me today
And your smile is fine
And it’s just like mine
And it won’t go away
Because everything is rosy & grey.

Well, I’ve been told that there’s a sucker born every day.
Well, I wonder who, and I wonder who.
Maybe the one who doesn’t realize there’s a thousand shades of grey.
‘Cause I know that’s true, yes I do, yeah, I know it’s true.
Yeah, I know it’s true, how ’bout you?

They’ve been pickin’ up trash and they’re puttin’ down roads
They’re brokering stocks
The class struggle explodes
And I play this guitar just the best that I can
Yeah, maybe I’m not and maybe I am.
Aw, who gives a damn?

Because
Everything is coming up
Rosy & grey.
Yeah, the wind is cold but
The smell of snow
Warms me today
And your smile is fine
And it’s just like mine
And it won’t go away
Because everything is rosy & grey.

Well, I’ve kissed you in France and I’ve kissed you in Spain
(harmonica)
And I’ve kissed you in places I’d better not name
(harmonica)
And I’ve seen the sun go down on Sacre Coeur
(harmonica)
But I like it much better goin’ down on you.
Yeah, you know that’s true.

Because
Everything is coming up
Rosy & grey.
Yeah, the wind is cold but
The smell of snow
Warms me today
And your smile is fine
And it’s just like mine
And it won’t go away
Because everything is rosy & grey.

Yeah, rosy & grey!

–“Rosy & Grey” by The Lowest of the Low

*This is from the concert album, *Nothing Short of a Bullet.* On the studio album, *Shakespeare My Butt*, it’s Henry Miller. Take your pick.

November 19th, 2008

Admirable Words

I have read in the past about a (famous?) writer who seeks inspiration by writing out texts by other people that he/she admires, just to enjoy the sensation of such great work flowing from his/her fingers. Do you know who this author is? If so, let me know and I’ll give credit for this great idea! In the meantime, I’m going to start trying it–typing out material I like, just to see if there’s anything in the rhythm of the text that I can learn from. Also, I think having reproduce a text letter by letter forces me to read with much greater attention. So what follows will not be cut’n’pastes but actually my own little fingers at work, and thus will likely contain some typos. I hope this will be a regular-ish Rose-coloured feature, a little more high-calibre reading material than I generally provide myself.

Thank you. Thank, my friends. Thank you for coming here on this beautiful Arizona eventing. My friends, we have — we have come the end of a long journey. The American people have spoken, and they have spoken clearly.

A little while ago, I had the honor of calling Senator Barack Obama to congratuate him. To congratulate him on being elected the next president of the country that we both love.

In a contest as long and difficult as this campaign has been, his success alone commands my respect for his ability and perserverance. But that he managed to do so by inspiring the hopes of so many millions of Americans who had once wrongly believed that they had little at stake or little influence in the election of an American president is something I deeply admire and commend him for achieving.

This is an historic election, and I recognize the special significance it has for African-Americans and for the special pride that must be theirs tonight.

I’ve always believed that America offers opportunities to all who have the industry and will to seize it. Senator Obama believes that, too.

But we both recognize that, though we have come a long way from the old injusticies that once stained our nation’s reputation and denied some Americans the full blessings of American citizenship, the memory of them still had the power to wound.

A century ago, President Theodore Poosevelt’s invitation of Booker T. Washington to dine at the White House was taken as an outrage in many quarters.

American today is a world away from the cruel and frightful bigotry of that time. There is no better evidence of this than the election of an African-American to the presidency of the United States.

Let there be no reason now…Let there be no reason now for any American to fail to cherish their citizenship in this, the greatest nation on Earth.

Senator Obama has achieved a grea thing for himself and for his country. I applaud him for it, and offer him my sincere sympathy that his beloved grandmother did not live to see this day. Though our faith assuresus she is at rest in the preseence of her creator and so very proud of the good man she helped raise.

Senator Obama and I have had and argued our differences, and he has prevailed. No doubt many of those differences remain.

These are difficult times for our country. And pledge to him tonight to do all in my power to help him lead us through the many challenges we face.

I urge all Americans…I urge all Americans who supported me to join me in not just congratulating him, but offering our next president our good will and earnest effort to find ways to come together to find the necessary compromises to bridge our differences and help restore our prosperity, defend our security in a dangerous world, and leave our children and grandchildren a stronger, better country than we inherited.

Whatever our differences, we are fellow Americans. And please believe me when I say no association has ever meant more to me than that.

It is natural. It’s natural, tonight, to feel some disappointment. But tomorrow, we must move beyond it and work together to get our country moving again. We fought– we fought as hard as we could. And though we fell short, the failure is mine, not yours. I am so…I am so deeply grateful to all of you for the great honor of your support and for all you have done for me. I wish the outcome had been different, my friends.

The road was a difficult one from the outset, but your support and friendship never wavered I cannot adequately express how deeply indebted I am to you.

I’m especially grateful to my wife, Cindy, my children, my dear other…my dear mother and all my family, and to the many old and dear friends who have stood by my side through the many ups and downs of this long campaign.

I have always been a fortunate man, and never more so for the love and encouragement you have given me.

You know, campaigns are often harder on a candidate’s family than on the candidate, and that’s been true in this campaign.

All I can offer in compensation is my love and gratitude and the promise of more peaceful years ahead.

I am also–I am also, of course, very thankful to Governor Sarah Palin, one of the best campaigners I’ve ever seen…one of the best campaigners I have ever seen, and an impressive new voice in our party for reform and the principles that have always been our greatest strength…her husband Todd and their five beautiful children..for their tireless dedidcation to our cause, and the courage and grace they showed in the rough and tumble of a presidential campaign.

We can all look forward with great interest to her future service to Alaska, the Republican Party and our country.

To all my campaign comrades, from Rick Davis and Stever Schmidt and Mark Salter, to every last volunteer who fought so hard and valiantly, month after month, in what at times seemed to be the most challenged campaign in modern times, thank you so much. A lost election will never mean more to me than the privildge of your faith and friendship.

I don’t know–I don’t know what more we could have done to try to win this election. I’ll leave that to others to determine. Every candidate makes mistakes, and I’m sure I made my share of them. But I won’t spend a moment of the future regretting what might have been.

This campaign was and will remain the great honor of my life, and my heart is filled with nothing but gratitude for the experience and to the American people for givign me a fiar hearing before deciding that Senator Obama and my old friend Senator Joe Biden should have the honor of leading us for the nest four years.

I would not–I would not be an American worth of the name should I regret a fate that has allowed me the extraordinary privilege of serving this country for half a century.

Tonight–tonight, mroe than any night, I hold in my heart nothing but love for this country and for all its citizens, whether they supported me or Senator Obama–whether they supported me or Senator Obama.

I wish Godspeed to the man who was my former opponent and will be my president. And I call on all Americans, as I have often in the campaign, to not despair of our present difficulties, but to beleive, always, in the promise and greatness of American, becuase nothign is ineveitable here.

Americans never quit. We never surrender.

We never hide from history. We make history.

Thank you, and God bless you, and God bless America. Thank you all very much.

(Text of John McCain’s concession speech, Tuesday November 4, 2008, as reported by the Associated Press)

“…no association has ever meant more to me…” Wow.
RR